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Sunday, March 13, 2016

6 Tips to Create Your Travel Itinerary!

When travelling, one important thing you need to have is an itinerary! Itinerary is basically your tentative for the whole trip - including your activities, where to stay, which transportation to use, what to eat and where, what to shop, things to bring and probably having your budget calculated.

Why you need to have one?

1. You don't want to waste time - unless you plan to go travelling in a place for months or a long time, then you're free to explore. But usually trips are around 2-5 days. So having an itinerary can help manage your time wisely.

2. You know where to go and what to do - when you do your itinerary, it means you have done a lot of research of the places you want to go, and the more you do research, the more places you'll find. Some might catch your interest, some might not. So you have plenty of activities to choose from.

3. You won't go overbudget (too much) - you'll be able to estimate the money you need to spend and usually avoid ending up being cheated (cause as tourist you'd probably get the price marked up)

And many more.

So from zero - how to start making one?1. Search in Google

This is a good way to start. Google knows a lot of things. Too much. So to make it easier for you, you can specify your search to meet your need. Play with the key words.

For example

Things to do in Nami Island (a bit general)

Adventures in Lombok (quite specific)

Romantic places to go in Paris (if this is what you need)

Interesting food to try in Bandung (Food lover)

Depends on you. But making the first step is important. This will actually give you a bit of an idea of what to do and what you want in your trip.

2. TripAdvisor

This website provides a lot of things to do in places and travel tips.
Plus bonus - you get to read a lot of people's review and from there you can make your own judgement whether a place is worth going or no.

3. Read up blogs

A lot of blogs is available on the internet. Read them up, you can also know prices people get for certain packages, and which place to go for cheaper price.

4. Ask friends who've been to the place.

Hearing out from a friend is also a good way to start planning your trip. Especially planning your time. You can estimate the time to get from one place to another based on your friends' experience. Since they've been through it.

5. Ask the locals, or let them plan for you!

If you have friends at the places you want to go, that's even awesome-r! I've had experience going to Singapore, Indonesia and Scotland having friends who actually lived there (I spent the nights at their houses, jazakumullahukhair). By knowing the places from them, I get to go to places tourist rarely go and it's really cool.

Here's one in Indonesia, my friends brought me to Ponggok and Candi Ratu Boko. If it wasn't because of them, I wouldn't even know these beautiful places exist - because the internet would suggest something more mainstream and touristic.

Who knew this place exists in Jogja? So beautiful!

6. Read other people's itinerary.

I found this cool trick. I usually read up people's experience in a facebook group specific for travelling and I've found better ways to search for itinerary (rather than scrolling the whole post or searching for post)

Go to files and I found a lot of itinerary, then I click ctrl + f and search for the location I want to go. Hoyeah ohsem I found lots of itineraries and it makes life easier! ahaha. I got excited for this.

7. Rome2rio

This is a cool website my friend introduced me to.

What you can do here is search for the place you want to go, even specific the name of the district there and it will let you know how to go there and how much it will cost. Also how long it will take. Seriously cool. Very helpful to plan your trip! Have fun exploring

Here's one example made by a friend during our trip to Rome last year, cool enough, so detailed!

Courtesy: Jak bukan nama sebenar

Okay.

I guess that's some ways to start planning. I'm still exploring this world of travelling. But still, with my little experience, I hope this helps. :)